Learning via immersion

Much is made of the human capacity to plan/think ahead. This ability to time travel began with the invention of writing to keep records or prepare plans.

But there is a limit to our imagination. As many developers of new technologies will explain, its often hard to know how people will use a "new-to-the-world" product/service until it exists and you can play with it.

The same can be said of the rules of complex systems. It is not until you immerse yourself in a culture/system/world/activity with which you are unfamiliar, that you can really grow to understand it. Like stepping into the world of thinking/acting like a mathematician, scientist and technician.

We apply the principal of learning via immersion when we play a series of quasi-maths games to help students discover how to think like a mathematician.

We begin by asking them to list the rules for judging the winner of this game:

"Complete the series A1, B2, C3......Z26"

As soon as the students have experienced the game they can "see" the rules immediately, including quite complex variations. A task that was previously beyond them.

It's the power of our right frontal lobes to help us survive novel, dangerous situations, and which formulate possible solution. Here's a typical set of responses:


The rules for judging the winner of the game are: all the numbers from 1 to 26 and letters from a to z must correspond, capital letter only, no missing/extra letters or numbers (should not end in 25/27), no spaces, separated by commas, no spaces between the numbers and the letters.

And if you ask the students to play the next game they quickly improve their performance as well:

Complete the series, AZ, BY, CX.......ZA,

It's just like the underlying rules/standards of algebra, geometry and arithmetic that mathematicians use all the time. You know you are more likely to have a promising solution, if after applying Occam's Razor, the solution is:

* The simplest.
* The most complete.
* Unique.
* Unambiguous.
* Contains no errors.

So, when you are designing a learning activity, it's a good idea to immerse the learners in the activity, and have them discover the rules, theory or model for themselves and perfect/correct it, because when they derive it themselves they will be more likely to remember it. Here's an example. You don't have to complete all the questions...just the most relevant:


1. Go to www.worldtime.com. Look at this simulation where the sun is shining on earth. Explain what you see, why some part of the earth is in sunshine, some in darkness and some in twilight. Also explain why one of the poles is in sunlight and the other in darkness.
2. After everyone has responded, print out a copy for everyone. Then respond to these questions
3. In what ways, if any, could we make this simpler? Small, concise, tidy, looks good
4. What do we need to do to make sure this is unambiguous/exact?
5. In what ways, if any, could we make more logical? Follows what has gone before, is the next step.
6. What do we need to do, if anything, to ensure it is reliable/correct? We will get the same outcome no matter who performs the process.
7. What do we need to do, if anything, to make sure it is complete? Is everything included?
8. Write a new description that explains what is happening in the www.worldtime.com model.